


baby, I love your way

by violentdarlings



Series: it is not dying [2]
Category: Me Before You (2016), Me Before You - Jojo Moyes
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 19:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: Five times Will's daughter wanted to help him.





	baby, I love your way

**Author's Note:**

> I am so touched by how many people loved the last fic I wrote about Me Before You, which is still one of my absolute favourite books/films. I couldn't stay away. :)
> 
> Title from the song by Big Mountain.

1.

Lily comes down to stay on Friday after school, and blows through the door like a hurricane. She drops her bag and flops down dramatically on the sofa. Will gives her a couple of minutes to sulk before he manoeuvres his chair into the room, surveying his daughter, still in her school uniform and glowering like the very presence of the universe is mortally offending her. “Problem?” he inquires dryly; Lily throws an arm over her eyes.

“I hate Mum,” she pronounces grimly. Will arches an eyebrow.

“What has she done this time?” he asks. Lily removes the shielding arm to glare at the ceiling.

“She says that I can’t come to visit anymore if I don’t get my marks up at school,” she mutters. “She says coming to see you and Lou is a distraction.” Will sighs.

“Your mum is a cow,” he says succinctly; Lily sits bolt upright.

“I know, right? And then she said…” Will only listens to the tirade with one ear, making agreeing noises every thirty seconds or so. He’s too busy looking at his daughter, her irritated face, the four-letter words spilling from her mouth with abandon. It’s like looking in a gender-bent mirror, and it’s extremely satisfying, to see his own rebelliousness echoed in his child.

So he’s a terrible role model to his daughter. Who fucking cares.

Lily ends her rant and is looking at him expectantly. Will nods. “How dare she,” he says generally, and it seems to be an appropriate response, because Lily nods viciously and lies back down.

“Yeah,” she says broodingly. “Is there anything to eat? I’m starving.” Will grins.

“Hi Starving, I’m Will,” he deadpans, and is regarded by an outraged expression and a groan.

“Dude. Just because you’re technically my dad doesn’t mean you get to make dad jokes.” Will smirks at her.

“I provided half your DNA, I get to make lame jokes, and you, you get to endure them,” he replies. “As for food, you’ll have to make it yourself. I’m a little bit paralysed at the moment.” His daughter rolls his eyes at him.

“You’ll say anything to get us to wait on you hand and foot,” she snaps, and then freezes like she’s been caught red-handed sneaking some of Clark’s wine. “Shit. Sorry, Will, I didn’t mean that.”

Will doesn’t listen to her apology. He’s too busy roaring with laughter.

“You’re insane,” Lily says, staring at him oddly. “Actually, properly insane. The motorcycle crash knocked a few screws loose upstairs as well as fucking up your spine.” Will calms enough to grin at her.

“Lily,” he says fondly. “Don’t ever apologise for treating me like I’m a normal person. You have no idea how refreshing it is.” Lily is pink cheeked and pleased, and trying not to look it.

“Yeah, whatever,” she mumbles, and hauls herself off the sofa. “Do you want tea? I’m going to put the kettle on.”

“Please,” Will says, and watches the complicated expressions play over her face. “Relax,” he tells her. “I’ll tell you what to do. It’s not hard to make me a cup of tea.” Lily scowls.

“I know that,” she replies sharply, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because Clark comes in halfway through with the groceries and takes over tea-making, much to Will’s relief – his daughter has no idea about the appropriate milk to tea ratio.

She definitely gets _that_ from her mother.

 

2.

They’re in London, at a five-star restaurant for Lily’s fourteenth birthday. She’s scowling, Will’s scowling, and neither of them want to be there – as discussed liberally and at length in the car on the way there until Clark had told them both to shut up. Lily had subsided with a rebellious mutter – Louisa is one of the few people who can get Lily to do anything, Will has found – and Will had just glared in silence through the windscreen until they’d arrived.

“I feel ridiculous,” he’d snapped softly as they make their way through the restaurant.

“You feel ridiculous? I _look_ ridiculous,” Lily had snarled in surreptitious reply.

“At least you can fucking move through this room without feeling like you’re about to knock one of these little tables over,” Will mutters. Lily just frowns.

“Wanna bet?”

Which brings him to his kid sitting beside him and Clark on the other, and Tanya, Francis and their two screaming brats, all around a table and pretending they’re all having a wonderful time. Except for Will himself, and Clark, of course, who isn’t disingenuous enough to feign enjoyment. And then there’s Lily, who just doesn’t give a fuck.

The moment comes when Clark nips to the loo and Will’s main course arrives. There’s supreme awkwardness around the table, everyone trying to look at anything other than the paralysed man who can’t even eat his dinner. Will stares resolutely at the tablecloth, feeling his ears turn red, before there’s a muffled curse beside him, and he looks up to see Lily seizing his tableware with a mulish expression.

“Fuck, it can’t be that hard,” she mutters. “I’ve seen Lou do it a hundred times. Just cut it up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Will agrees; Tanya, her hands fluttering, half rises out of her chair.

“Lily, maybe you should let Louisa do that –”

“Lou’s in the loo,” Lily replies, apparently without intending the rhyme, but Will smirks anyway. “I was in there earlier and there was a queue out the bloody door –”

“Language, Lily,” Tanya snaps, and Lily rolls her eyes, albeit with her head on an angle so only Will can see it.

“ _Yes_ , Mum. Anyway, Lou might be a while, and Will’s narky enough already without eating a cold dinner.”

“I am not narky,” Will says amiably, as Lily triumphantly finishes dicing up his surf and turf.

“Yeah, whatever. Now open up.” Will obligingly opens his mouth.

“Lily, what are you doing?” Clark asks, appearing around the corner like an angel sent from heaven, to deliver him from these idiots (he is not referring to his daughter, by the way). “There’s too much on that fork.”

Lily flushes and abruptly drops the fork, splattering bits of steak and prawn everywhere. “Sorry for trying to help,” she snaps, snatching up her little purse and stalking off in the direction of the toilets. Clark looks after her sadly.

“I didn’t mean to make her upset,” she says, and Tanya sniffs pointedly. Like a laser that detects bullshit, Will turns his head and fixes his ex-girlfriend with the iciest glare he can manage. Tanya turns as red as her daughter and refocuses hastily on her Caesar salad.

Lily doesn’t come back for twenty minutes, and when she does her eyes are suspiciously red and her mascara has been hastily reapplied. Nothing more is said about it, but Will lets his good hand drop from the arm of his chair until it hangs free. He can no more lift it than he can stand or walk or ski again, but his hand dangles over for a moment before Lily’s small, soft hand is gently lifting it back where it belongs. Will squeezes as best he can, with his finger and thumb, and Lily squeezes back.

(And later, when they get home, Clark scoops Lily up in a hug and tells her she was doing a good job and would she like to learn how to do it properly, and it’s not eavesdropping, it’s not, but Will’s not sure how he feels when he hears his daughter reply yes.)

 

3.

“She shouldn’t have to look after me,” Will repeats stubbornly. Clark sighs, and brings over two cups of tea.

“She wants to learn,” his girl replies, sitting down beside him and brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes. (He’s due another haircut.) “She wants to spend as much time with you as possible. And that means learning how to help you when you need it.”

“I do not need it,” Will mutters, aware he’s being just as childish as his teenaged daughter can be, and utterly uncaring of the fact. Clark smirks at him, her eyes suddenly mischievous.

“Let her try and I’ll do that thing you like later,” she bargains. Will blinks, stunned for a moment, before a broad grin spreads across his face.

“You are diabolical, woman,” he replies proudly. Clark smiles.

“You say that like it’s a surprise,” she says, and leans down to kiss him.

“That’s disgusting,” says Lily, and Will turns his head to see his daughter standing in the doorway, her bag slung over her shoulder.

“You’re early,” he says by way of greeting. Lily sniffs.

“End of term,” she informs them, disappearing for a moment while she sets her bag down in the room that is no longer referred to as the spare room. Now, it is simply Lily’s room. “I thought I’d surprise you by getting her early and instead I’m traumatised for life. I’m going to need therapy.”

“Well, I wasn’t able to traumatise you when you were younger on account of being unaware you existed,” Will replies blandly. “I must make up for it now.” Clark sniggers. “As for your therapy, allow me to add to your trauma; Clark and I have a very healthy sex life.” Lily gags, now prone on the sofa.

“Oh, that is gross,” she says with feeling. Will widens his eyes, as falsely innocent as he knows how to be.

“Really? Don’t you want your poor, paralysed old dad to still have a bit of fun?” Lily has turned a faint shade of green.

“I’m cool with you having it, I just don’t need to know about it!” Clark takes pity on her.

“He’s only joking,” she soothes, going over to the girl and kissing her forehead. Will watches how Lily leans into the fond hand Clark runs over her hair, and wonders if that need for touch, that propensity to allow only a select few close, is bred into his bones. If he has passed it along to his kid as well as let it dwell within his breast all these years.

Will wheels himself over to the sofa and twitches his hand at his daughter. Lily glances up at him through slitted eyes. “What?” she asks, and Clark laughs softly, before taking Lily’s hand and wrapping Will’s own firmly around it. Will smiles at them both. He’ll never be okay with this life, but it gets more bearable every day.

“If you want to learn how to… help me with things, then you can,” Will tells his daughter. Lily’s eyes come all the way open.

“Really?” she asks, and there is no denying the undisguised hope in her voice. It all clicks for Will, then, that she’s thought that his refusal to allow her assistance had meant that he didn’t intend to keep her around for long, that she was only a temporary fixture in his bizarre and extraordinary life. And that hurts, because once, he felt the same way about Clark. He knows that chest-deep ache, that displacement that bites all the way to the bone.

“Really,” he replies, and squeezes her little hand. “If you’re going to stick around here, you’d better make yourself useful.”

“Will!” Clark chides, but Lily’s eyes are shining.

“Of course,” she says, and Will smirks.

“Just… no bed baths, okay?” he teases, and Lily turns that faint shade of green again. 

“Definitely not,” Lily replies fervently, and Clark kisses them both on the top of the head and then orders pizza, and Louisa demonstrates to Lily the fine art of feeding him pizza.

And later, when their kid ( _their_ kid, Clark cares more about Lily than Tanya ever could) is asleep, Will takes his Clark to bed and she does that thing that he likes, albeit very quietly, because their kid is a light sleeper.

And it’s good.

 

4.

It’s Will’s first Christmas both with Lily and Clark. He has two weeks off work and is enough of his old self again to rejoice at it. For months, he’d been slavishly grateful for his job, for feeling even a fraction normal again, until the gloss had worn off and he’d been living for the weekend just like everybody else. More normality. It was marvellous.

He’d called Dignitas months ago, when Lily had first burst into their life, and informed them he would not be availing himself of their services. They’d sounded happy for him. Will himself isn’t always happy about it himself: when his hands and feet hurt, when his BP rises and Nathan gets that pinched expression around his mouth, when his mum or dad says something stupid and Will wants to punch them. There are days when Will thinks he was mad to stay.

But there are more that he is glad he stuck around for. Lily comes to visit just about every week now. Will still works, but more and more he’s thinking about taking a teaching position. He hadn’t thought about it at all, until he’d received an unexpected offer from his previous university. He’d said no, but the offer had been there all the same. It would be easier. He’d have more time to spend with Lily, more time to spend with Clark.

Oh, Clark. His brilliant girl. She’s decorated the annexe from top to toe, in marked contrast to the previous Christmases he’s spent here. There’s tinsel in every room, and holly, and even a tree, with a neat pile of presents underneath.

Most of them are for Lily. Will had followed Clark around the shops – feeling very much like a third wheel – as Louisa had shopped for their families and friends. Will would have felt irritated by it, by the strangers staring at him and Louisa’s blithe certainty that _everyone_ required a gift, except he was too busy being amused by the put-upon expressions of other male shoppers as they hoisted endless shopping bags and trotted around wearily after their partners. (“At least this go-kart of mine is good for something,” Will had commented dryly and with some amusement as he and Clark once again got to skip to the head of the long line of waiting customers. Clark had slapped him lightly on the arm and told him to be quiet, which only made him laugh harder, of course.)

His daughter is in her room, listening to something loud and wailing, reappearing every so often for the biscuits that Clark is constantly pulling out of the oven. The annexe smells like cinnamon and vanilla, and it’s warm and the snow is falling outside and it’s not a bad day to be alive.

Around three in the morning, Will is awoken by a surreptitious whisper. “Will. Wiiiill. Wake up.”

“I’m awake,” he whispers back. he can just barely see his daughter, lit by the screen of her mobile phone. “They’re underneath the bed.”

With far more sneakiness than Will is comfortable with, Lily reaches under the bed and draws out the small stack of presents. Will had not wrapped a single one of them himself, but they are from him all the same. For Clark. For Lily.

“I’ll put them under the tree,” Lily whispers, and Will can only see the brief flash of her smile in the dark, like a blade being unsheathed, or a light flickering into existence.

Will smiles back, and the flush of conspiratorial glee carries him through all the way to the morning.

 

 

5.

He wakes up, and his hands are on fire, his feet are burning. Once this would have been horrific, to deal with alone, but he and Clark have it down to a fine art by now. Will groans aloud, and turns his head – the pillow beside him is empty.

The panic sets in almost instantaneously.

“Clark,” he calls, softly and reasonably; it lasts only a moment before he breaks. “CLARK!” he bellows, and somewhere nearby there’s a thudding sound as his girl presumably falls off the sofa. She goes out there to sleep, sometimes, when she’s restless and doesn’t want to risk elbowing or kicking him in her sleep –

A light flickers on in the hall, and Lily appears, blinking owlishly in the sudden brightness. “What’s wrong?” she asks, and Will grits his teeth.

“Get Louisa,” he says, and Lily’s face changes, something of Will’s own panic echoed in her expression.

“She’s gone down to the village,” she says. “She went around midnight. Her dad’s not well.” Later, Will will be concerned for Bernard, but he does not have room for it now in amidst the fire and the fear.

“I need her,” Will says tightly. “Call her. Tell her it’s my hands and my feet. She’ll know what that means.”

Lily wavers. “Do you want me to go get your parents instead –” Will flinches.

“No,” he snaps. “Ring Clark.” Thankfully, his kid is a teenager, permanently attached to her gadgets, and she’s already fumbling through her phone for Louisa’s number.

Will closes his eyes, and breathes, and endures. He hears the distant sound of Clark’s voice through the phone line, and Lily’s panicked words, and waits. He is familiar with pain, after all.

Sometime later, although Will could not have said if it was five minutes or thirty, someone is pulling the sheets off him. Will sighs, and doesn’t bother to open his eyes as cool cloths are laid over his burning feet. “Clark,” he says dizzily. “I would throttle you if I had my hands.” There’s a soft noise, the wrong timbre to be Clark. Will cracks an eye open.

“Only me,” Lily says, and puts more clothes over his hands. “Sorry to disappoint.” Will opens his other eye.

“What are you doing?” he asks. Lily shrugs, and puts her hands on his shoulders.

“I need to put another pillow under your head,” she says, and after a moment Will nods. Gently, like she might break him, his daughter lifts his head and shoulders, enough to prop another pillow underneath him. She does it like she’s done it a hundred times before, not just the handful he has allowed her and that she and Clark had insisted on, but Will can feel her hands shaking.

“You won’t hurt me,” he says, and Lily manages a tiny smile once he’s settled, picking up a glass from the bedside table.

“That’s what Lou said,” she replies, and brings the straw up to his lips. The water is bitter with pain meds, a taste he’s as familiar with as tea or his favourite jam. Although less pleasant, of course. “She’s on her way back. Her dad’s okay, it just turned out to be indigestion.” Will smiles faintly.

“That’s good,” he says, and closes his eyes; he hears the faint chink of the glass being set down. “You did good, Lils.” There’s a soft, faint noise, like a hastily indrawn breath.

“Thanks, Dad – I mean, uh, Will.” Will smiles again, much more intensely this time. Dad. She called him Dad.

“You can call me Dad if you want, kid,” he replies. Lily sniffs, and Will opens his eyes at once; there are tears shining in her eyes. “Hey,” he says, and twitches his hand at her; Lily tucks her own in his at once. “No need for that.” His daughter nods, and smiles, but she’s crying all the same.

“I’ve never had a proper dad,” she says, and Will knows this, but it hits him again all the same, that he’d lived so long without knowing he had a daughter.

“You do now,” he says firmly, and when Clark arrives, she finds Lily asleep on her side of the bed, still clutching Will’s hand. Will smiles ruefully at her.

“Is your dad all right?” he asks in a whisper. Clark nods.

“He mixed six pints, a pork pie and three slices of cake together and wonders why he got indigestion,” she replies softly, but the exasperation is plain in her voice. “Lily called. I’m so sorry, Will.”

“it’s fine,” Will replies. “Lily did well. She called me Dad.” He tries to say it without letting too much emotion into his voice, but Clark knows him too well to be fooled by that.

Louisa’s smile is as bright as it was that first day, when he hadn’t known she’d become the centre of his world, along with the kid still holding his hand. “Well, of course,” she says. “You are her dad.”

Will nods.

Clark wakes Lily with a hand on her shoulder, and his kid, still half-asleep, wanders off to bed with a muffled ‘good night’. Later, Will is still awake, his pain gone but his mind unable to sleep, churning over a thousand ideas, and one.

He makes up his mind.

“Clark,” he whispers. Louisa makes a faint, sleepy noise. “I, er –”

“Spit it out, Will,” Clark sighs. “It’s bloody two in the morning.” Will grins.

“So it is,” he says, and an elbow jabs him in the ribs. “Clark, it’s just that –” He knows what he wants to say. He just can’t make himself say it.

“Will.” Clark sounds like she might be asleep again.

“If – later on, of course, in a few years, if you wanted another one, we could try.”

For a moment that might be forever, Louisa is still. But the forever passes, and Louisa is there, kissing him all over his face. Her eyes are as bright as the day he met her, when it had been impossible for him to know the impact she’d have on his world. But he knows now.

“I love you,” she says. It’s enough to hinge a life on.


End file.
